I Was There
I was there
in the Gulf of Tonkin on Aug 5th 1964 aboard the USS Constellation
CVA64 . Today was my birthday. It was sunny and calm out at sea. All of us on
catapult # 1 and 2 were waiting around for the next launch, just routine. All
of a sudden we heard “General Quarters, General Quarters. All hands man your
battle stations. This is not a drill.” It sent shivers through our whole
bodies. “What’s going on,” someone said. No one knew what the hell was
happening. We all went to our assigned battle stations. My battle station was
out on the flight deck on catapult #1 with the rest of my crew. As we waited
for the launch we saw that all of the aircraft were loaded was bombs and
rockets. Actually we were a little scared because we didn’t know if we were
about to be attacked by enemy planes or what. Not knowing what is going on is the
worse. Our adrenaline was up as they brought the aircraft forward so we could
hook them up to the catapult. Once they were on the catapult our job began,
hooking up the cables from the catapult to the aircraft. It was strictly
business at that point and doing our job. We couldn’t afford to have our head
up our ass or someone would get killed.
The launch went perfect. It was quiet now that
all the planes were in the air. Since we were at battle stations we couldn’t
leave the flight deck. We took off our ears that protected us from the sounds
of the jet aircraft and stood there. We were trying to find out what was
happening but no one around us knew anything.
After a while we heard, “Secure From General Quarters.” That meant that
we could get back to our normal routine. We had other launches during the day
but not under General Quarters. The planes were still being loaded with bombs
and rockets though. It wasn’t until after our last launch sometime during the
night that the Captain came on the load speaker. “I guess you have been
wondering why we went to General Quarters today.” “Yeah, we sure are
wondering,” I thought to myself. He went on to say that we had launched an air
strike against North Vietnam, sinking 21 torpedo boats.
From that day forward, every combat aircraft
that we launched were fully loaded with bombs and rockets for the rest of our
cruise.
USS Constellation (CV-64)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Constellation_%28CV-64%29
Operation Pierce Arrow
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pierce_Arrow
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Constellation_%28CV-64%29
Operation Pierce Arrow
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pierce_Arrow
